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App store trends are your first step to market research for your app idea

Companies have always relied on preliminary market research before embarking on a new product development or introducing a new service. At the very least, it gives them a good understanding of the opportunities, the gaps that their product or service can fill, and what it would take for them to achieve success.

The same holds true for app development. You may have a great app idea, a great way of representing that idea through your app design, but all that means nothing if it does not address the market need, or bring to your potential consumers what they are looking for.

A key part of market research when developing an app is to research app stores. Doing so, will help you find segments that are popular and trending.

Identifying trends in the app store
It is important to remember that your smartphone will show the app store for your country. Furthermore, each country’s app store will show trends specific to that region.

A good place to look is the ‘Top Charts’ section which will give you an idea as to which apps and genres are successful.

Also, it is important to note how the apps are making money. For example, apps in the top grossing section make money from in-app purchases while paid apps make money through upfront payment.

Following app trends outside of the app store
You can leverage ‘Google Trends’ to find out what keywords are popular. Be sure to monitor rising search terms as well. With ‘Google Trends’, you can set different parameters to help derive better results. It is important to set a time frame that is less than 12 months so that you can be sure that you are seeing the most relevant results. Also, you can select those categories which will automatically generate the most popular search terms within categories.

You can do a deep dive into your results by going to the “Advanced Options and Filters” tab and set it to bring results from “mobile devices with full internet browsers” and then set the match type to “exact match”. Doing so will get you highly accurate results on how people search on their smartphones.

This research, when done right will tell you what kind of apps or games are popular in the market. Not just that, but it will also give you the insight into whether your app idea is an absolute original or will it improving upon an existing app idea.